Death of a New American--A Novel Read online

  Sofia put a firm hand on her back. “You practice until she comes. You need practice.”

  I watched as they walked back to the house, Mabel protesting with every step. When Sofia returned, she said, “I’m going to take the baby for a walk. You want to come?”

  I glanced toward the library, where the first sullen plinks were sounding. “You don’t have to stay?”

  She smiled and whispered, “Mabel play very badly. Better to be outside. Come, we get away from the house.”

  And so we walked, accompanied only by the sound of the carriage wheels squeaking along the grass and a view of the ocean in the distance. A gentle wind blew Sofia’s hair off her forehead and she tilted her head back in pleasure. At the start, I felt the walk had a purpose. Now I wondered if perhaps the goal was simply a brief escape, the sort of benign rebellion those of us who work in others’ homes resort to when we feel too closely watched.

  As if she guessed what I was thinking, Sofia said, “It’s good for the baby, fresh air. Good for me, too. I get tired of being—”

  “Cooped up?” I guessed.

  She nodded, eyebrow raised to signal we were now being candid.

  I looked out at the water. “It’s beautiful, but quiet. Do you mind being away from the city?”

  For a moment, I thought she had not heard me. But then she answered, “No, I don’t like the city. I’m better here.” She glanced up from the carriage. “You know the Tylers a long time? Mr. and Mrs. Charles?”

  “I used to work for Mr. Tyler’s aunt. I saw them when they came to visit her. I thought Alva Tyler was wonderful.”

  I had the sense I hadn’t given her exactly the answer she wanted, so I asked, “Have you worked for them for very long?”

  She shook her head. “They’re nice, the Benchleys? Good to work for?”

  Her inquiry was hasty, cutting off other questions. I wondered if that was her insecure English or something else. “Better than most.”

  Sofia looked down at the sleepy baby. “You are verygood to work for, too. You are a nice and pleasant boss. Even if you make me work terrible hours.”

  We were now on the outskirts of the property; the ground was less even and Sofia carefully navigated the carriage around tree roots and rocks. We felt far from the house, and so it was a surprise to spot one of the guards walking slowly at the edge of the trees in the distance.

  Seeing that Sofia had noticed him, too, I wondered how it felt to her, as an Italian, to see the house guarded against her people. Gesturing to the man, I said, “Feels a little silly, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t think it’s silly. There are … bad people.” She hesitated, as if unsure whether to trust me. Then she seemed to make her mind up, because she added, “But some people, afraid all the time of everybody. That’s…” She waved a hand to indicate madness, and I nodded in agreement.

  I asked, “What was the song you were singing yesterday? You have a lovely voice.”

  She smiled at the compliment. “Fa la ninna, fa la nanna … it’s an old lullaby. It’s a terrible song, though. All about the baby won’t sleep, mother is tired. If he don’t sleep, she’s going to give him to the dark one. Poor baby!”

  We settled under a large tree. Sofia stretched out her legs, her arms reaching high over her head. From where we sat, I could see a small cluster of markers in the distance. There were two short stones—property markers, I thought at first. But then I took in a crooked cross made of sticks and realized I was looking at a grave site.

  I was about to ask who was buried there when Sofia said, “Miss Benchley—she killed a man, no?”

  It took me a moment to understand. “No. Her sister’s fiancé, the man she was going to marry, he was killed. But by someone else.”

  “Some men, they need killing.” She was joking and I laughed. “Mr. William, he’s verynice. I do not want him having a killer in his family.” She stared at the branches overhead. “People, it’s hard to know.”

  Here it was again, the invitation.

  “What’s it like working for Alva Tyler?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. The nursery, she never comes there.”

  Her tone was bored, and I took it as a young girl’s apathy about an older woman who nagged. “Well, the less she comes to the nursery, perhaps the less she complains.”

  “Complain!” Sitting up, Sofia burst out with what had been on her mind from the start. “Always she find fault with me. Over nothing. She gets so”—she wrestled with the word—“nervous. Worry all the time. Always ‘Why is baby awake, he should be asleep.’ ‘Why is he asleep, should be awake.’ What he eat, what he do, what his diapers look like. She never let me open the window, baby might get cold.” She tugged at her blouse. “I am dying in that house, so hot I can’t sleep. But no open windows. No air. I tell her it’s not good for the children. Mabel, she’s so—” She jogged her hand in the air to indicate Mabel’s eagerness. “But because she needs outdoors. Not this.” Now she froze, a grimace on her face. “Everything like this.”

  I thought her unfair. Italians were freer with their emotions than other people; Sofia was not yet used to the manners of a well-born American family. But then I remembered what I had overheard in the hallway last night—Mrs. Tyler tearfully accusing Sofia, her nerves so on edge. She had moved the family out of the city, but clearly she wasn’t sure they were out of harm’s way. Charles Tyler had said he liked the Italians as a people; did his wife feel the same? She seemed quite mistrustful of the young woman in her home.

  “It may not be the easiest time for her,” I said carefully. “Her husband’s car blown up. The Moretti trial. And a wedding,” I added, trying to make light of it.

  “I know. I tell myself that. She has … pain. Fears. But I have fears, and I am not some rich woman with a husband. I am also scared, but you can’t live like that. It makes you…”

  I waited for her next word, but her mood changed and the subject with it.

  “Mr. Tyler, he’s wonderful, but he is the other way.” She saw I didn’t understand and tried to explain. “Men like that, who are good, sometimes, they’re too good. Too trusting. They decide, ‘Oh, he is one of my people, I trust him, he’s a good man. Good woman.’ But they don’t see…”

  She found a blade of grass, worried it between thumb and forefinger. “Once, I try to tell him, I say, Mr. Tyler, you want to trust this person, but—” She rolled the grass to paste. “But he was very angry with me. After that, I don’t say nothing.”

  As if sensing her frustration, the baby began to fuss. Instantly, she was on her feet, clucking and cooing as she lifted the youngest Tyler from his carriage. She stroked his head, murmuring in Italian. Snuggling him close, she said to me, “You want to hold him? He’s wonderful.”

  It does me no credit, but I was not overly fond of babies. It seemed an insult to refuse, though, so I took him—and decided that if one had to hold a baby one could do much worse than Frederick Tyler. The silky hair that covered his broad skull was reddish brown like his mother’s. He was very satisfying, sweet and heavy and if I didn’t know quite how to make him comfortable, he did, dropping his head against my chest and blowing a bubble of spit. His little fingers crawled along my blouse until he found a button and pulled.

  Sofia laughed and said, “Men.” Taking him back, she lifted him high in the air. “I want one just like you.” She lowered him to kiss each plump cheek. “I want twelve.”

  Then she joked, “But maybe I have to find a man first. That helps.”

  “So I hear.”

  Lifting herself off the ground, she said, “Come. Mabel is done with her ‘torture.’” Whether Mabel was the victim or made others the victim of her playing was unclear.

  We were faster on our way back, partly from necessity and partly because Sofia seemed less burdened. My shoes were not ideal for country walking, and I struggled to keep up. At one point, I gestured that she shouldn’t lag for me; Mabel would be waiting. And so Aldo didn’t see me when
he appeared from the garage.

  Spotting Sofia, he began making his way toward her. She tried to dodge him, but he stepped in front of her. He was smiling and when he spoke in Italian, it was in a tone I knew well. Pleasant, but warm to the point of insinuation. Sofia’s answers, in contrast, were short and ill-tempered. I knew a little Italian; not enough to understand the exchange—but well enough to know he was offering her something she didn’t want.

  The conversation grew heated. Aldo’s tone became accusatory. Sofia gestured angrily to the carriage. Then she threw a hand up in denial and turned to go past him. As she went, he called after her in English, “I know! I know what you’re doing—”

  I hurried forward and in a neutral voice, said, “Mr. Grimaldi.”

  Caught short, he offered his sour smile. “Miss Prescott.” Then he went back to the garage.

  Catching up to Sofia, I said, “What was that?”

  “Nothing. He’s a man. He has the ideas all men have.”

  “You should tell Mrs. Tyler.” She made a face of eloquent derision the Italians are so skilled at. “Then Mr. Tyler.”

  “He don’t want to hear anything against that one, believe me.”

  “Whether he wants to or not—”

  “No,” she said, interrupting me. “You know. You work in someone’s house, you live there, you take care of their children—it feels like family, yes? You think these people, they care about you.”

  “Yes.” Because they did, I thought, the Benchleys did care. Louise did …

  She shook her head. “They don’t. You are not family. Just worker. They decide they don’t like you? Gone. Yes, now you are here, but you don’t … belong. You are in between. Not here, not there. Nobody.”

  I watched her go, a knot in my stomach. I recalled at my first employer’s house, there had been a butler that every young woman knew to steer clear of when he was drunk. And once or twice, we had trouble with guests. I could still remember the time a Mr. Bradley, a gentleman famous for his manners and sailing prowess, came up behind me one early morning when I was sweeping the ash out of the library fireplace. Without a word, he put one hand around my waist and the other on my breast. I had screamed more out of shock than outrage and he immediately stepped back with a smile as if nothing had happened and left the room.

  Mechanically, I had gone back to sweeping; surely nothing had happened, he would have apologized if he’d really done … what he had done. It had taken a few minutes before I realized I was crying and dropped the brush on the ground. But the Bradleys left the next day and I never told anyone.

  What had happened between Sofia and Aldo felt more dangerous than a squeeze. The chauffeur had to know he was not the kind of man to attract a young, pretty girl—and yet he was furious that she rejected his advances. That kind of rage, I knew, easily turned violent. And yet I also knew Sofia was right. No one wanted to hear that kind of thing. Especially not from young women paid to sweep ashes or change diapers.

  Later that afternoon, I ran short on beige darning thread. I was on my way to beg from Mrs. Briggs when I heard raised voices from the front parlor. Tea was long over; and from the tone, this was not a friendly chat over toast, but a heated argument between two people. One of whom was Mrs. Florence Tyler.

  “You will do this, William.”

  There was a brief pause, which I guessed was William’s attempt to speak. Then his mother’s voice came back, full force.

  “Well, I’m very sorry, but as your grandmother once said to me, your personal sentiments are of no concern. Unless you have other means of guaranteeing your security, of which I’m unaware.”

  There was silence.

  “No,” said his mother. “I didn’t think so.”

  I walked on, feeling downcast. I knew Mrs. Tyler’s interest in the marriage was purely financial. But I had thought William was fond of Louise. Small wonder she was beset with anxiety. William played the role of enamored suitor well enough, but clearly she sensed reluctance.

  Why did marriage have to be such an economic concern? Or, I thought rebelliously, why did it have to be at all? Why could women and men not just come together for the pleasure of each other’s company? Wasn’t that what the free-love advocates said?

  But Mrs. Tyler was right: free love was not an option for William and Louise. They would simply have to make the best of it.

  * * *

  If I hoped that matters would improve over dinner, I was disappointed. Or so Louise’s drooping shoulders and spirits told me when she came up to her room that night. Sinking into a chair so I could brush her hair, she sighed deeply and closed her eyes. I let her sit for a long while, pulling the brush through more to soothe than smooth. Then I whispered, “And how was your evening, Miss Louise?”

  A despairing hand rose and fell. “Mabel asked when we were going to have babies.”

  “What did you say?”

  She stood and let me pull her nightgown over her head. Voice muffled, she said, “I didn’t. William did.” She appeared again, adding, “He said soon, he hopes. He wants a big family.”

  Given the conversation I had overheard, I was heartened to hear William enthusiastic about any aspect of matrimony. “That’s nice—isn’t it?”

  “Oh, of course.” As I started to gather her discarded clothes, she said, “Jane?”

  “Yes, Miss Louise?”

  “Do you know what happens?”

  I echoed, “Happens.”

  “Not when babies come, but … before.” She sat awkwardly on the bed. “You know.”

  Suddenly, I did know. And could only say, “Oh.”

  “I asked Mother. She said I’d know when it happened.”

  Which was true, but hardly instructive. That could be for the best, I reasoned. Mrs. Benchley could become incoherent on a matter as simple as toast. The mind boggled at what she would make of sexual hygiene.

  Growing up in a home for working women of a very old and very particular profession had been educational; one of the women at the refuge had told me the basic facts when I was nine. It sounded so improbable, I thought she must be making it up. But when I got up the nerve to ask the cook if that was really what men and women did, she said, “It is—and don’t you let none of them do it to you.”

  Privacy being scarce on the Lower East Side, I learned to look away if the noises in an alley were such that I could guess the sight would be two people, pants down, skirts up. Once or twice, I didn’t look away, curious as to what could be so urgent. As for personal experience, I could claim a single conquest: Peter Beckwith, a hall boy at Mrs. Armslow’s. Months of flirtation had culminated in a few pleasant, fumbling minutes in the pantry on New Year’s Eve. The next day, the other maids were planning a wedding and the housekeeper informed me that if I did it again, I would be thrown out. I had no desire to be fired or Mrs. Peter Beckwith, so I refused to speak to him ever again. I had hopes of breaking his heart, but he moved on to a kitchen maid named Tess, who did become Mrs. Peter Beckwith in a year’s time.

  Louise’s lack of knowledge was surprising, but not unheard-of. I was aware of couples who remained in ignorance of their spouse’s exact anatomy for their entire married lives, conducting all reproductive efforts in the dark as swiftly as possible. But lack of knowledge was never a good thing. More than a few of the women at the refuge were of the opinion that, in the words of one, “if the wives weren’t so ignorant, the husbands wouldn’t be so itchy.” I didn’t want William to be itchy.

  I was debating whether or not to begin with menses, when there was a knock at the door. From the other side, we heard, “It’s Mabel. Are you sleeping?”

  I went to the door prepared to tell Mabel she must come back another time, but Louise said, “Not at all. Please come in, Mabel.”

  The door immediately opened and Mabel came in, a large scrapbook under her arm. Settling herself in a deep, soft armchair near Louise, she said, “I wanted to show you my album. It’s a sort of history of my family.” To me, she said, “Yo
u can look, too.”

  Mabel opened the bulky volume on her lap and angled it toward Louise. Pointing to the first photograph, she said, “There’s Mother and Father getting married.”

  I saw the Alva Tyler of my memory, handsome and vital, her brazen hair gathered under a veil. Beside her, Charles Tyler, slimmer, mustache more modest.

  Mabel turned the page. “And here’s my brother Charlie, and there’s my brother Arthur.” Two small Tylers stared solemnly from adjoining pages. “This is when they were little. They’re at school now. I don’t have a picture of Freddy yet. Oh—here’s our dog, Bunkum. He’s dead.”

  There was no picture of the child who had died, I noticed. Nor did Mabel refer to him. I wondered what she remembered of him.

  After a few pages, the family photos gave way to newspaper clippings. All of which prominently featured Charles Tyler striking a heroic, ebullient pose. “Here’s Father shaking hands with President Taft. Here’s Father after he arrested Ludo … vico”—she peered at the tiny caption—“Albini. Oh, and here he is at the trial of Johnny Spanish—that’s a different one than the one that’s going to happen next month. See, this is him with that little boy who got kidnapped…”

  It was a triumphant photograph taken just after the boy had been found, all the policemen responsible and the many weapons seized from the gang—guns, clubs, and knives. At the center, Charles Tyler with a wide-eyed child on his lap. The picture showed Mr. Tyler making a present of one of the more gruesome knives to little Emilio Forti. Smiling, the boy brandished the knife, while Tyler grinned as if he were six years old himself.

  “You’re quite the chronicler, Miss Mabel,” I said. She looked puzzled at the word. “You keep an admirable record of your parents’ lives.” As if they were celebrities to be gazed at, I thought.

  “Thank you. Mother doesn’t like me to read newspapers, she says they’ll frighten me and that I don’t understand the words, but I do.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be a reporter when you grow up,” said Louise.